Tuesday I had to go to work, and then come home early because the air conditioner guy was coming over. At work I just hung around and talked to people. Students were surprised that I was still around, and I talked to a few of them for a while. Money continued to come in – various people gave me cash to help me with my new life.

Around noon I was gone and arrived home in time to let the air conditioner guys come in and get to work. Actually, the guy is a friend of Kuniko’s dad. He wasn’t clear on my relationship with Kuniko’s dad, but he was cheerful and they worked hard. There wasn’t much I could do while they were working. They were working in the two rooms with all the boxes. I did laundry, and worked on some odd jobs until they were just wrapping up when Kuniko got home in the afternoon. She wasn’t feeling well at work so she came home early.

She actually knew the air conditioning guy, and they set the record straight on the relationship and you could see the light dawning in the guy’s eyes. He left around five and we had two cool rooms thanks to the power of air conditioning and the power of Kuniko’s dad’s wallet.

He actually dropped by that evening to check on things, and we served him some tea and let him sit in our cool living room and enjoy his present to us. Before long he left, but I could tell he was really happy that we’ll have some cooling this summer in the living room.

We were still working on the pumpkin, so Kuniko made mabodofu (pumpkin instead of tofu) and pumpkin fried rice and both were great. We finally finished off the pumpkin, and we got several great meals out of it.

Monday I had taken the day off from work to continue cleaning and organizing. I hung out in Okubo organizing there, and was there when the NTT guy came over to hook up our phone. Still no internet – hopefully we can get that taken care of later in the week.

I spent all day unpacking at home – I had plenty to do, and to tell the truth I didn’t really make much of a dent. The biggest chore was getting the washing machine installed so we could do laundry. The washer connects to the water source in the wall, usually by screwing on a fixture that has a gasket inside. Then the other end is a quick release connector attached to a hose that runs to the machine. Every time I screwed on the little fixture and turned on the water, it would leak. I went to Saty to buy a replacement, and the guy said that I was doing it wrong and showed me the right way. It made sense, so I went home and tried that, but it still leaked. I went back to Saty and bought a new fixture, and then that was leaking, too.

Finally I gave up and went looking around town until I found a hardware store, and asked the guy there what I should do. The guy was extremely helpful and said that many people have the same problem. He had another solution involving a big wrench and a new stainless steel piece, and I gladly paid for the wrench and the new piece, because I could see that there was no way this was going to leak. I got home and with great satisfaction hooked up the machine and started doing laundry.

Kuniko came home and we went shopping for curtains, and also got a stove for the kitchen for a pretty good price. We went home and got to work hooking everything up, and we were set.

Kuniko’s folks gave us a pumpkin from their garden, and it was a fairly big one. Kuniko got to work on making some dishes out of it. She worked hard in the hot kitchen and came up with three delicious pumpkin dishes – a baked pumpkin quiche, a cold pumpkin and onion salad, and a pumpkin spaghetti carbonara. I opened up a bottle of good red wine and it made a nice complement to all the excellent food. It was way too much food for one night, so we sampled everything and then put the leftovers away for breakfast the next day.

Sunday I headed over to the old place to clean, and Kuniko went to work for a little bit and then started unpacking in the new place. I took the early train to Futami, and it was weird to arrive at the Nishi Futami station and head for the apartment so early in the morning. It already felt like it wasn’t home anymore. Ito Yokado wasn’t open yet, so I walked around, and then got set up cleaning in the old place.

During the packing there were lots of things that piled up that we didn’t want. Usually we could just throw things away, but these were not legal to throw away for various reasons. Everything was junk, but it was not burnable or it was hazardous. I was really worrying about what we were going to do with these. I piled it all up on the back porch, and spent the rest of the day cleaning the house. I bought some cleaning supplies and some water and ice from IY when it opened, and plugged in a radio and listened to a strange Japanese FM station that played a mix of western music and contemporary Japanese jazz. Outside it rained steadily, and I just kept scrubbing until five o’clock. Kuniko came over and took some of the last stuff in the car, and we went back to Okubo. She had completely unpacked the kitchen and started arranging things in there. I liked her layout – we’ll try it out for a while and see what works and what doesn’t.

We ended up eating 100 yen sushi at a Sushi-ro, one of our favorite conveyor belt sushi places for dinner. We ate 25 plates of sushi between us, so we left full and it wasn’t so expensive. We still need to buy a stove for the kitchen, so until then we get to eat out for a while.

Saturday we got up early and moved two loads of stuff to Okubo before Kuniko’s parents arrived at our old place in Futami. Kuniko’s dad got to work right away uninstalling the air conditioner, since we were planning on taking it with us. Kuniko and I started moving big stuff into her parents’ truck, and finally we all drove over to Okubo with two car loads of stuff.

I really hate moving. There was a stretch of time some years back where I moved maybe five times in three years, and each time was hell. This move was right up there with the toughest moves I’ve done. In the middle of summer, in another language, up two flights of stairs – there were lots of challenges. To make a long story short, we did two loads on Saturday and got 90% of our stuff into the new place. The weather worked out for us – sunny all day. I would hate to have done that move in the rain.

Kuniko’s dad remarked that it was nice to have air conditioning in the bedroom, but what about the living room? He decided to buy us a present of a new air conditioner for the living room. We told him that we were fine – we survived with just one in the teacher’s apartments in Futami, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and made arrangements on his cell phone to have it installed along with the old air conditioner.

Finally we wrapped up the day and Kuniko’s folks went home. Kuniko and I made a trip to a store that changes tatami mats and fusuma doors – I was on the hook to buy a new set for the old place since I was moving out. Andy, my predecessor, had to buy new tatami and fusuma doors for me – it cost him about $1000 U.S. I was worried about the price – that’s the cost of a round trip ticket to America! But, we found a cheap place and it ended up costing only around $500. Not so bad. Sorry you got reamed, Andy.

For dinner that night we ordered in pizza and sat in the living room with the fan blowing on us surrounded by boxes. We drank some cold beer from the Jusco supermarket across the street, and enjoyed relaxing in a new environment.

The good news about this place is that it has a real shower, and a super digital bathtub. The hot water comes right out of the faucet, so the days of turning on a big furnace and waiting around for the bath to heat up are over. To tell the truth, we didn’t really realize that this place had that feature – shame on the guy who showed it to us because it would have been a lock right away.

So the shower is great – I had a shower for just a little while in Futami but it was only really effective in summer. During the winter it wouldn’t deliver hot water. I unhooked it and started taking baths. Kuniko’s old place in Osaka had a great shower, and we always used to talk about how nice that was back in the day. This new place has the exact same shower, so it’s like a return to the golden days of bathing for me.

The super digital bathtub is really cool. You set the temperature of the water, and push a button, and the bathtub fills to whatever level you like at exactly the temperature you want, and then when it gets there it sounds a little alarm to tell you that it is ready. It maintains the temperature by adding more hot water automatically, and it’s big enough for two.

Anyway, all this sweating and heavy lifting had taken a toll, so I took a cold shower, a hot bath, and then a cold shower again. I ended up taking about an hour to enjoy it, and came out refreshed and clean. Seriously – this was a pinnacle moment in my life. I’m never going to forget that shower and bath.

But, it’s back to reality and we’ve still got a lot of work to do. Tomorrow, we’re going to split up the workload.

On Friday we decided to get a jump on moving day. We both took a day off from work, and we started packing up stuff in the car and ferrying it over to the new place. With key in hand we unlocked the new apartment and looked around – it had been almost a month since we had seen it. The place looked good, though, and we started putting our stuff inside. It is up two big flights of stairs, so you really had to try to take a lot. That made for a couple of very tired people at the end of the day.

It was a cycle we went through – load up the stuff in Futami, get in the car all sweaty and depend on the air conditioning until we reached Okubo, then unload everything and get back in the car all sweaty again. I carried a towel with me at all times to deal with all the sweat.

We had lunch at a ramen place near our new apartment, and unfortunately it was one of those really greasy places that puts lots of extra fat into the broth. Everything else was good, but the fat was a real turn off for us. Luckily we were burning it off so fast today that it wasn’t likely to stick around long.

In the afternoon we spent time at the old place getting it ready for the big move the next day, and we were so tired that we even fell asleep for a little while. We woke up on time though to head into Akashi and meet up with Tamura sensei and her boyfriend for a farewell dinner for Yuri.

We hadn’t seen any of these guys for quite a while. Tamura sensei is not working now – I’m not sure if that is by choice or not. Her boyfriend Takuma is going to school and working on landing a part time job. It sounds like he’s got a full time job lined up after he finishes college, so that is good news. Yuri was sad to be heading home, and it was sad to say goodbye to her. We showered her with presents, and there was even another guest – a friend of hers that she met randomly in Japan along with his wife and their baby.

Their baby was cute, but she was scared of me – big time. I tried holding her and she broke out in tears. I felt so bad – usually I’m good with kids. Maybe it was the smell of sweat from all the moving we did.

We ate lots of food and left the place stuffed. We said our final farewells at the station, and then everyone headed off in different directions. I was sorry to see Yuri go, but I’m sure she’ll have a great time back in the states. She wasn’t sure if she would stay the last year or not – I think sometimes she regretted sticking around as long as she did. She’ll do fine, though – she’s smart and funny and bilingual – that’s a big plus when it comes to finding work.

We slept soundly at Futami that night, keeping in mind that it would be our last night there. Kind of the end of an era for me.

Today was a big day. It was the last day that I would be at school with the students – they were having a closing ceremony, and starting tomorrow most of them wouldn’t come to school. In the staff room I was asked to make a goodbye speech to the teachers, so I did a short goodbye in Japanese. I was pretty nervous, though. The teachers all smiled and clapped, and I sat down with some relief at the end of the speech.

Soon after we had the closing ceremony in the gymnasium. I sat on the stage to one side in a chair, and then the principal came up on stage and spoke from the podium. He told the students how I had found a new job, how I had spent three years at the school and had even gotten married a year back. He pretty much stole the thunder from my speech, but that was OK. I listened politely off to the side while a thousand students watched me from the floor. As I looked around the gym and looked at faces I was struck by the fact that I could look at each student and remember something about them – in class, in club, in the hallways – somewhere we had had a conversation or made some kind of connection, and that was pretty impressive.

Finally it was time to make my speech. I stood up and spoke in English, thanking the students and telling them how happy I was to teach at the school and how much I would miss it. Then, I switched to Japanese and spoke for about five minutes. I told them about how I learned Japanese, what I will be doing next, and where I will be living next. It was fun to speak with them, although I was pretty nervous and I made lots of mistakes in Japanese. The students were smiling and reacting well, though. After my speech the student council gave me flowers, and made a short speech in English thanking me for my time at the school. I thanked them for the flowers, and then stepped down and walked to the back of the gym. As I walked down the line of students they smiled and nodded at me.

There was more ceremonial stuff to take care of, but at the end I stationed myself at the exit and as students walked by I said goodbye and good luck to them.

Back in the staff room, everyone congratulated me on the speech and gave me words of encouragement. Also, surprisingly many teachers gave me envelopes of cash. It is a Japanese custom, but I certainly didn’t expect it to be applied to me. At the end of the day I had nearly $400 in envelopes.

In the afternoon things slowed down quite a bit. I waited until there was a staff meeting, then headed home to do a quick wardrobe change and then go to Kobe to meet Nel and Kiyomi.

Nel and Kiyomi had organized a final get-together with me and Antoine, and they had invited Kuniko and Antoine’s girlfriend Miwako to meet up as well. Unfortunately Miwako couldn’t make it, so it was just the five of us. We all gathered in Kobe’s Harborland, and together went to a buffet style restaurant to pig out.

I hadn’t seen Kiyomi in a long time. She and Nel met in America, and she came here with Nel to live. They actually got married here in Japan. Kiyomi is from the Tokyo area, and they are planning on moving back that way in the next couple of days. Kiyomi is not shy at all about using English, and it is very good because of all her time living in America.

We sat around a table and talked and laughed and had a great time. Kiyomi and Nel told us about their new place in Tokyo (near a Mexican chain restaurant!) and Nel’s new job, and also that they were pregnant! They’ve been trying for almost a year now, so that was great news. It will be nice to have some friends in Tokyo – next time we visit we’ll have some futon space.

Antoine was happy about landing a job and someone to sponsor his visa. He’ll be teaching elementary school kids in Nishinomiya – the same city where I’ll be working, and is really happy about being able to stay in Japan. Anyway, everyone had good news to share, and we ate lots of food and drank plenty of beer. Afterwards we walked along the pier and then back to the train station. After doing a little shopping at an import foods store, we all made our way back home. It was a fun night, and a busy day for me.

It was pouring rain all night last night. I woke up once and groggily asked Kuniko what that noise was – it was the constant sound of rain dumping outside. We checked the television and there was a flood warning for my area. That meant that the students were not coming to school today, and that also meant that I had taught my last class at Takasago Minami High School. Today was supposed to be my last two classes, but I guess yesterday was my last day teaching.

Kuniko was off again to work early today in her car, but she dropped me off at the station to spare me from getting too wet on the walk over there. I arrived at school early, and was able to get some vocabulary done as the teachers trickled in.

Everybody was happy about the warning because it means an easy day at work. Usually everyone sits around and then sooner or later the vice principal announces that everyone probably has something better to do, and then everybody leaves. I had previously arranged to leave early to sign my new contract in Osaka – now it looks like I wasted half a day off of nenkyu (time off) – but at this point it probably doesn’t matter. I’ve got short-timer syndrome, and I think I could probably take more time off later if I needed it. As it stands now I’m taking a long weekend to do stuff related to the big move.

At around 10:30 I hit the road for Osaka, trying hard to stay dry along the way. I knew the route from last time, and it was really no problem to get there. I spent a little time shopping for some souvenirs for Yuri who is leaving Japan next month, and because the guy couldn’t make change I had to buy a frozen orange slurpee thing at the food court. I felt clever for buying something small to break the big 10,000 yen bill, until I realized after drinking it that I probably stained my tongue orange before meeting with my new employers.

After scraping my tongue repeatedly with my teeth I went into the office, and the employees there were sitting around the table finishing up lunch. They were all really friendly this time around and I got a good vibe from them. They all speak really good English, so that is a big plus. A few minutes after I arrived, two other new hires showed up, and we introduced ourselves and read over the contract together before signing it.

The other two guys were interesting. Both were Canadian. One was named Corey, and he was about my age and married to a Chinese woman with Japanese nationality. He is finishing up his second year on JET, and he’s looking for a temporary job to keep him out of trouble until his wife finished grad school in Kobe. He’s been in Japan a long time, and he had a kind of calm air about him – he projected patience and understanding. Interesting dude.

The other guy, Louis, was fresh off the boat – his second week in Japan, and he was eager to glean information from us. He was in the wide-eyed “Wow, I’m in Japan!” stage, and it was fun to see someone enjoying themselves so much. He’ll be a good teacher – all the eagerness will pay off in class.

We wrapped up the paperwork as fast as possible, and then we all got out of there. Corey was off to a farewell party at his old school, and Louis was off to Takatsuki where he lives. I took at look at a shop on my way out and then ended up bumping into Corey on the train back. He got along pretty well – we’re both quiet and calm, and we’ve both got a lot of experience in Japan, so it was nice to share part of the train ride back.

Since I was in Osaka I took the subway across town to see if I could get my Nintendo DS fixed. There was a Nintendo store listed on their website, so I tracked it down with the help of some helpful people on the street, and eventually nearly walked by a big stone non-descript office building. The only way I could tell that it was Nintendo was by reading the kanji on a small plate next to the door. There was no Nintendo logo and no signs elsewhere – it was like they were trying to keep a low profile.

I guess I was expecting something else – something flashy and full of life-sized Mario dolls or something. I walked inside and there was a single reception desk and a huge lobby filled with empty couches and some abstract artwork. The receptionist confirmed that this was indeed the right place, and so I told her about the problem. She listened to my weird Japanese and then offered to fix it for free. Unfortunately it will take anywhere from 10-14 days, so Kuniko and I will be in withdrawls until it comes back.

I left the Nintendo DS with them, and then hit the road back to Osaka, and caught a train from there back home. I made a stop in Akashi to buy some sushi for dinner, since we’re running out of dishes and foodstuffs at home in preparation for the move. I also spent time on the phone getting the utilities switched over. Telephone operators at the utility companies were merciless as far as speaking speed – they talked fast and didn’t slow down their explanations for me. It was a challenge, but I think I got it all figured out. We’ll see what reality is like on moving day.

Also, with the end of the JET program coming up it is my last chance to see some close friends. Thursday night Kuniko and I are going to meet Nel and his wife Kiyomi, and Antoine and maybe his girlfriend Miwako in Harborland. Nel got a job in Tokyo, they found an apartment, and rumor has it they might be pregnant, too. Friday night we are meeting up with Tamura sensei and her boyfriend to say goodbye to Yuri, who is finishing up three years in Japan on the program and heading home to California.

Next week we’re going to try to meet up with Carrie and Struan at two different times, so we’ll be spending a lot of time saying goodbye.

I was a little sluggish today coming out of the gate, likely due to all the alcohol from last night. Kuniko drove to school today, so I walked alone the the train station and caught a ride into Takasago. There are not so many days left in this commute – just a couple of weeks left.

At school I had two classes. In the first one I talked with students that had taken the English proficiency interview. They told me all about it and how they thought they did. I think my coaching helped them a little – at least I hope.

The second class was with Tsutsumi sensei, and she had arranged a small surprise for me. Each of the students wrote a farewell note to me and read it to me in front of the class. I knew it was just an assignment, but the students seemed sincere and it was fun to listen to them and the nice things that they had to say.

I had a short break between periods and then in the fourth period we had a lecture by a guy from Western Australia. The connection is that our school sends a field trip every summer to Western Australia, and this guy lives in Japan now but represents Western Australian businesses looking to open up in Japan.

He did the lecture in English, although I heard that his Japanese was fluent – he studied it in college and grad school. Mr. Hayashi was off-stage and he read a translation of the speech, so it had a weird disembodied voice effect that was mildly disturbing.

There was a reporter from the Kobe newspaper there, and she was smoking hot. She interviewed some of the teachers in the school office, and they must have had seven other teachers just checking their paperwork to get a chance to gawk at her. She walked around with a giant camera and took pictures during the speech, and even took a couple of shots of the audience. The funny part of that was that about 70% of the students were asleep. I wonder how those photos will turn out.

Other than the fact that this guy represents Western Australia, there wasn’t much else that our students could sink their teeth into. The speech was a canned one that highlights business opportunities for Japanese companies, and as such was not really interesting to 17 year old high school students. He even told them they should drink Australian wines and urged them to go visit Australia because the drinking age is lower.

Things got a little hairy when they went off script to do questions. The questions came from two businessmen in the audience as guests of the principal. They were long winded, and came out of left field, and the speaker didn’t quite understand the Japanese being spoken (I know I didn’t). Mr. Hayashi translated their questions into English, and then the speaker gave his answer and then Mr. Hayashi translated back into Japanese. If it sounds like a long boring process, it was.

Afterwards I was chatting with Nozaki sensei and she and I both noticed that Mr. Hayashi had dropped a lot of pertinent information out of the translation. I think that Nozaki sensei is pretty sharp – she caught all the details and I think she would do a great job in the same position.

The rest of my day was pretty mellow – I stayed out of trouble and inside where it was dry and air conditioned. After school I stopped in at the eye doctor to buy some contacts, and now I’m back home getting ready to cook dinner (okonomiyaki).

Tomorrow I’m headed into Osaka to sign my contract for the next job, and on the way back I’m going to a Nintendo store to have them look at some strange behavior in our Nintendo DS lite. I hope it isn’t a serious problem – there’s a new kanji game that comes out Thursday. Want, want, want!

Monday was a holiday for us, so we took advantage of it and did a little bit of packing and a lot of resting. The laundry had to be put on hold because of the weather – it was raining all day long. It is hard enough to get things dry in the humidity, but add rain showers and it is pretty near impossible.

In the evening we went over to Denya to meet up with the yakitori gang. Initially we had run into Yamashita-san and his wife in Okubo, and I had made plans with them to meet up. He got in touch with the other folks in the group, and we had full attendance. It was great to see everybody, and there was a new face – a new baby girl who was very curious. I held her for a little while, and she enjoyed eating my hand.

With all the kids running around there, I asked Yamashita-san and his wife if they were starting to think about having a child, and they told me that unfortunately they just lost one. I guess it had died just recently, and this was their first time meeting everyone since it happened. They seemed to be OK, a little sad, but they had a good attitude about it. They even had a picture of the baby on their cell phone, which gave me a jolt when they showed me. It’s sad enough without seeing a picture of the dead baby, but it was important to them.

Yamashita-san’s wife cried a little bit, and you could see that it was still fresh and tough for them. But it was a good place for them to be – with a bunch of good friends at the yakitori. Yamashita-san said that there is a good yakitori in Okubo where we are moving, so I think we will be meeting up there sometime soon.

Kuniko and I both drank too much, and didn’t eat enough, but that was because we were talking with everyone and having such a good time. Everybody there is so nice, and for them to drop whatever they were planning to come over and hang out together – it meant a lot to me.

We’re in the middle of a long weekend here. Kuniko is taking the weekend off, and so we’re working on getting everything organized for the move. It is hard work, and even tougher in the heat and humidity. We work for short bursts between breaks.

Not only are we packing, but we’re also throwing out lots of crap. I had planned on giving some of the crap to my successor, since I received the crap from my predecessor and it seems like some sort of tradition. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do that since she’ll be moving into a different place. And then I’m moving crap into a new place and it looks like what it is – crap. If she arrives and the crap is already in place in her new home, it just seems like part of the scenery and it is not so crap-like.

Anyway, we’ve done a little bit of shopping in between packing sessions, and that has been a welcome break. We can go out there and enjoy some air conditioning, and get a change of scenery. We were in Okubo and we bumped into four different people that I know while walking around the mall. That’s pretty impressive for me – I didn’t know I had so many friends. One of the people we bumped into was Yamashita-san and his wife – they are the couple who had the second party that we attended in a karaoke box.

We decided to meet up, so on Monday night we’ll go to Denya and hang out with the gang. I’m looking forward to it.

Lots of little details going on behind the scenes related to the move, and there will be a week or so where I won’t have internet, so if I drop off the radar, that’s what’s going on. The move isn’t until the end of this week, though, so I’ve got a little time left. I’m also going into Osaka on Wednesday to sign my contract for the new job. Antoine signed his contract this past Friday, and so from September he will be teaching elementary school kids. That should be interesting for him – he’s going the get I workout, I’ll bet. The hours are nice for him, though – Mon-Fri 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. or so. Seems like a nice gig, I hope it works out for him.

I’m sweating up a storm sitting in front of the hot computer, so I’ll log out and go chomp on some ice to keep cool. More later!

It was a very quiet day at work today. I had just one class in the morning, and it went very smoothly. After that I was free. I just ran around town doing errands, ate a big lunch, and tried to look busy. Gradually I’m transferring my Japanese textbooks into my bag and out the door, with the goal of having a clear desk in the next few days.

I accepted the position that I was offered in Nishinomiya, and I heard back from them and they confirmed it, so it’s all good until the contract is signed. I might be busy taking care of paperwork for the new company in the upcoming weeks, on top of all the other stuff I am trying to get down ahead of the big change.

Bad news for the next ALT – it looks like she’ll be stuck with a single apartment, instead of the big one that we’ve got here. The single apartments are pretty small, I hear, although I’ve never been in one. It’s not 100% for sure yet, but it does look pretty grim. That’s also tough for me. The stuff I wanted to leave for the next ALT might not all fit in her new place. That means I might have to hold onto it or get rid of it. Yuck!

I’m sweating it out at home now – it’s another very hot day. We’ve got tons of potatoes to get rid of, so I’m heating up the house even more by making au gratin potatoes. It’s my first time, but with lots of cheese and a little bit of butter, how can I go wrong? We’ll see…

Today it was a little hard to spring right out of bed, and I ended up sleeping through and having to rush through a bath. No time to make lunch, either. That’s what I get for staying out late eating Chilean food with a beautiful woman.

On the way to school it was raining a tiny bit, but it wasn’t enough to postpone the second day of sports for my school. If it was postponed I would have three classes, so I was glad that things went OK. The students are going to be exhausted tomorrow – there won’t be many signs of life in my Thursday classes.

The sports went pretty well, and I spent half my time watching the boys playing kick baseball and the girls playing volleyball. I rooted on the first year students, since they were always the underdogs. I had some good conversations with students, and it was fun to just relax and watch the games. The kick baseball was pretty exciting, but the volleyball was really boring. There wasn’t much volleying going on.

A group of girl students invited me to sit and cheer for their team, so I hung out with them and we spoke lots of English. It was fun to root for their team because they were so bad, but at one point they had a good run and almost caught up with the other team. After they finished I walked around and gave encouragement to the team – they did well even though they lost.

After lunch in the cafeteria I checked my mail and found a message from the staffing company I interviewed with. They offered me the job, and so I sent them a few follow-up questions. I got the answers and I’ll talk it over with Kuniko tonight when she gets home. It was encouraging, though, and if it works out it sounds like it could be fun. I would be teaching at a new level – junior high school, and it would be a job more like a real-life job. Not as much support as you find on the JET program. The pay is not quite as good as JET either, but it is competitive. I’ll mull it over and get back to them tomorrow. It would be nice to have a job waiting for me when I get back from Europe – it would make the trip more enjoyable, that’s for sure.

I stuck around the whole day, even though most of the action died down after lunch. The principal and vice principal asked me separately how the job interview went, so I told them all about it without mentioning that they offered me the job – I want to build the suspense a little bit and also keep my options open. If I don’t take the job I don’t want it to look like I’m too picky… they might not help me out in the future.

It is amazing to me how everyone is asking about me and cheering me on. It is reassuring to know that all these people care about you and your well-being, and that has been nice for me to observe lately.

I survived a blitz of questions from the history teacher. He is making a big push to use up as much of my time as he can before I leave. He’s trying to organize a drinking party with just me and him to say goodbye, but I might dodge it. He wants to invite the new ALT as well, in a bid to trap her in his web of long-winded English questions. I’ll really have to warn her when she arrives.

When I arrived home I found that the railpass tickets had been relayed successfully from my parents, and everything seems to be in order. Whew – what a relief.

Tonight should be a pretty mellow night. Kuniko thought she would get home early tonight, but I haven’t heard from her yet. Hopefully we’ll both have some downtime tonight before things get busy again just before the weekend.

Tuesday and Wednesday are scheduled sports days at our school. Instead of the big multi-event sports day in fall, these are competitions of just two sports, volleyball and kick baseball. The idea is to wear out the students a little bit, and give the teachers a break to calculate their grades for the end of the term.

For me Tuesday was really easy. I walked around watching various games. I cheered for teams that had players that I knew well, and I retreated to the air conditioned staff room when things got too hot.

Today I had an interview in Osaka for a job, so I made arrangements in advance with the vice principal to take half the day off. I had never been to that part of Osaka, so I wanted plenty of time to get there. Since I had asked them for a letter of recommendation, there was no problem taking time off.

I left at around noon, and walked to the train station in Takasago. On the way there, a lady that lives near the school rode by on a bike and commented that I was leaving early. Except, it wasn’t in the tone of “Wow, you are lucky that you get to leave early!”, it was more of “Shouldn’t you be teaching students instead of wasting the taxpayer’s money by going home so early?”

As she rode by I told her that I had in fact taken time off for personal reasons, and she seemed satisfied with that – at least as far as I could tell. Still, what a big culture difference! What if I was going home because a family member was in the hospital, or injured? What if my contract was changed and I’m working nights two days a week? Maybe some people are used to traditional things – sometimes they don’t think about the big picture.

I got home and ironed up my shirt and pants, shaved again, cleaned up and then hit the road for Osaka.

Starting this month many of the train lines have moved to an integrated circuit card, and they are all connected, so you can use the same card wherever you go. You don’t have to buy tickets any more, and you just wave your card over the pad and walk through. Also in many convenience stores you can pay with this card, too. It is a step closer to a moneyless society – if I could only charge the card online from my bank account, then it would be a no brainer.

I used my IC card from my train station in Futami all the way to my destination, changing train lines four times. I used four different companies including the subway and a tram, and I didn’t have to even open my wallet. So cool.

When I finally arrived, it was next to a gigantic building called the Asian Trade Center. In my mind I had pictures floors and floors of offices having to do with the flow of trade within Southeast Asia, but instead it was a giant building with floors and floors of furniture. The building was enormous, with several different wings and around 24 floors of stores. The weird thing was that only about 40% of the stores were occupied, and when I was there only about 30% of those were open. It was as if somebody envisioned a grand showroom filled with people, and it didn’t work out. There was kind of a lonely feel about the place – like you are walking around a giant shopping mall and you are the last human being on Earth.

As I walked around I realized that this place was right on the docks, and it made it really easy to move big things like furniture into the country and put them up for sale without having to transport them too far. The galleries that were open were the size of football fields, and sometimes you could only see people like dots in the distance running the store.

Walking around there were some other stores that looked like they were taking advantage of the cheap rent – they looked out of place. One place was selling Carlberg beer on draft, and that was it. One place was using the space available and built a huge racetrack for remote control cars. I found a store dedicated to selling bigger-than-life-sized robots and characters that are popular Japanese icons.

I had arrived about an hour early, so I looked around for a while, and then finally went in to the place. It was in a wing of the building dedicated to incubating fledgling businesses. The office was completely bare – it looked like a temporary office to me. The people running it were nice enough, and the one that I had been in contact with sat me down and interviewed me in English.

It lasted about 45 minutes, and I think in the end they liked me. They have 10 positions available, and they have already filled three of them. I think I have a good shot at one of the remaining seven.

There is only one potential problem. The school board that I would be working for requires the foreign teachers to hold an instructor visa. This is to prevent some jokers from coming in on a tourist visa and then overstaying. Unfortunately, the take that rule too literally, and even though my spouse visa has no work restrictions and lasts for three years, it is not an instructor visa. For this very foolish reason, I may not get the job. I don’t think anyone has ever gone into the immigration office and asked for a downgrade of their visa.

After I wrapped that up I caught the tram back towards the main part of Osaka. When I got on the tram I was surrounded by beautiful women – all dressed up really nicely for some kind of event. It was like some kind of commercial – I thought perhaps there were cameras rolling to catch my reaction… seriously – the whole car was filled with them, and they all seemed to know each other.

I got back to Osaka, and then caught the train back to Kobe. Kuniko and I met up after she got off work, and together we went to get some burgers over at Star Child. Unfortunately, it was closed on Tuesdays, so instead we went to the Chilean restaurant down the street.

I’ve been to the restaurant just once before with Antoine, but it was a bit more fun with Kuniko. We ordered up lots of food and enjoyed the good service. We were the only people in the restaurant, so they really took care of us. And then Kuniko saw a cockroach.

Usually if you see a cockroach in a restaurant, it’s the kiss of death. I found some cockroaches in my apartment when I first moved in, and it freaked me out a little bit. But I killed them and they didn’t come back. If people see cockroaches, they think dirty and uncared for, and so when we saw the cockroach I thought we probably had a ruined evening on our hands.

The server came walking towards us and almost stepped on the little guy, but I pointed him out in the interest of catching the little bastard, and they soon brought out the cook and the owner and they started hunting him down. He escaped, however, and they apologized profusely. How embarrassing. Kuniko seemed OK with it, and the food was delicious, so we kept at it.

A few minutes later the cockroach made a run from his hiding place, and I jumped up, ran over and gave him a taste of the bottom of my shoe. Bye, bye cockroach. The staff gave me a round of applause, and I returned to my meal, appetite intact.

They brought out some free cocktails to reward us, and probably to make sure we came back, and we enjoyed those while finishing off the steak cooked Chilean style. The owner came out and sang three songs for us on his guitar in Spanish, and then thanked us very much for coming in. Overall it was a great time – I’m totally up for coming back. I think Kuniko is, too. We’ll see.

We came on back home and crashed. It was a busy day, and we were both tired out.

It was a big Monday.

I was tossing and turning all night suffering from sunburn on the tops of my feet, of all places. I guess it is just one of the prices of sitting around on the beach all day. I was musing aloud to Kuniko that I used to be able to sit around the beach in California without sunscreen – I wonder why I got burned this time. Kuniko joked around that it is probably the ozone layer is that much thinner. She might be right…

Actually, I have no one to blame but myself – I put sunscreen everywhere else and the tops of my feet and ankles are the only parts that got crispy. It made my hot bath in the morning and putting socks on a real adventure.

At school I had just one class today, a lecture to a chemistry class. Luckily the class is one that usually teach English to – in fact, I will teach them English next week. They all filed in and immediately started wondering what the hell Bryan was doing there.

The chemistry teacher, Nishikawa sensei, introduced me and told them that I would be talking about wine, and it would all be in English – just to scare them a little. I took over and started off the lecture the same way I do all my classes – “Hello! Good morning everyone!” Then I lectured for the next 40 minutes entirely in Japanese.

At first the students looked around in surprise, and then they paid attention. I had done a Powerpoint presentation so there was half English and half Japanese written down for them to observe. I also had lots of pictures for them to look at, and I explained as best I could the fermentation process, and how everything combines to make a quality wine.

Lecturing in Japanese is seriously difficult. I had no notes other than the Powerpoint as my guide, and I came up with some really strange Japanese. I would start to explain something, get going down the road, and then realize I didn’t know how to finish off the explanation. It was really tough, but not impossible. A lot of times I would hear snickers as I probably had said something really stupid, and other times I could hear myself clearly making stupid mistakes, but the words were already out of my mouth – no taking them back! It was a good insight into how my Japanese English teachers feel every day they teach with me.

To add to the pressure, the principal and vice principal of the school came to watch, the history teacher was there, and three other teachers, one taking pictures.

Once I finished the presentation I asked if there were any questions, and I looked with some alarm at the clock and realized I had almost 10 minutes extra to kill. Luckily, some students actually asked some questions! These are the same silent students from my English class, and now they were talking! One boy asked about how tannins combine in red wine, and if there is an upper limit to the flavor structures they create. Another boy asked me what temperature wine should be stored, and he was writing down my answer – but he was a little young to have a cellar at home.

After those questions the teachers pitched in to help kill the time with some questions. They asked about different wood types – why oak for barrels? How old do you have to be to drink in America, how much flavor does a barrel impart? The vice principal asked me a question in English, which caught me off-guard. I answered in Japanese, just in case.

It was a sweaty, tough lecture, but I got through it and I’m really proud of myself. It’s one of those stories I’ll be able to tell over a beer – “You think that lecture was tough? Check this out…”

Later I dropped by the principal’s office to chat, and it was here that I got a reality check about how far my Japanese has really come. We were talking about this and that, and I asked him if he could write a quick letter of recommendation for me for a job interview that I have on Tuesday. This simple request set off a chain of events that I had to deal with for the next two hours.

It’s a long story, but it seems that he and Hasegawa sensei (the guy who has been looking for a job for me) thought that I had found a job teaching at a language school. As far as I knew, everybody was still keeping an eye out for me, and as it turned out, they weren’t anymore.

We talked it out and discovered that an email exchange I had two weeks ago with Hasegawa sensei in Japanese caused him to believe that I was going to work at a conversation school for a few months until April when the new school started. That is my backup plan, but somehow when I wrote the mail to him, he thought it was my main plan, and he called off the dogs, so to speak.

My principal and I had several other miscommunications while we tried to iron out the original one, and finally we got it worked out and I called Hasegawa sensei and we’re on the same page. It ain’t easy speaking a foreign language, but it’s even tougher when your job future might hinge on what the guy in front of you is saying. More pressure!

Two hours later I came back to my desk and was able to decompress. I had lunch, and then went to attend a meeting of students that are interested in taking the new International Understanding course that will be offered next term. Mr. Hayashi had some friends from Australia coming to talk to the students, so I waited with them while they finished up lunch downstairs with the principal.

It was fun to talk to the students while we were waiting. I taught them useful words like “armpit” and “strict”, and I got a chance to talk to some students who are really good at English but for some reason or another don’t really speak out during my class.

Finally the Australians arrived – three giant people who came into the room and started speaking to the students. The main guy runs a museum in Perth, and will be hosting some of the students on their trip this summer. He seemed like a really nice guy, and he spoke some broken Japanese to the students, while Mr. Hayashi supplied vocabulary when his ran out. He also brought his daughter, and another lady that is teaching English somewhere in Hyogo, although I’m not sure if she was a JET or not.

I couldn’t get over their size, to tell you the truth. The were packing on pounds, and the guy was really tall to boot. They told some good stories, and the students for the most part paid attention and even asked a couple of questions (How old are you?), so I think it was a success. It wasn’t an English class, it was about international understanding, and I think that part worked OK.

The rest of my day I was getting ready for my interview tomorrow, and wrapping up the grades for this term. I got home at the regular time, which was nice, and now I’m getting dinner ready for Kuniko when she arrives. We’re going to have a chicken teriyaki donburi, and we should have plenty of rice leftover from that to power our lunches for a couple of days.

Kuniko was off to work again – on another everlasting weekend-less week. Rather than just sit around at home and sweat and do more packing, I decided to head for the beach.

I went to Suma beach because it is the closest to an authentic beach as I’m going to get. The day was sunny, and there were lots of people out there. I bought a sandwich and two big cold beers and sat out in the sun enjoying the sound of the little mini-waves lapping against the sand.

They had built a lot of temporary restaurants/bars to cater to the beach crowd, and while I was walking around looking at them one of the hawkers out front called out my name. I was surprised – my first thought was, “How do they know my name?” Was I wearing a name tag or something? Then I recognized the guy – he was a student of mine two years ago.

I chatted with him a while in Japanese, and we got caught up. He was a really cool student back then, and now he’s enjoying college and doing part time work to earn spending money.

I found a good place to sit down by the water, and there weren’t too many people around – it wasn’t like some beaches where there are people laying out just a few feet away all around you.

There was a young couple next to me – a girl that looked about 18, but she was drinking an alcoholic beverage so maybe she was older. She was with what at first I thought was her boyfriend, but I couldn’t immediately tell the sex. The girl drinking was wearing a tiny bikini, something you don’t often see on the beaches in Japan. She was bouncing around and splashing in the water and trying to get her boyfriend to come down and play with her. Her boyfriend was interested in smoking and spacing out. Finally when some other guys starting paying a lot of attention to the girl bouncing around he walked down. As he walked down to the water I saw that he was wearing a bra!

Well, it was a sports bra, but it was a bra. I tried not to stare, but they were hanging out and holding hands and not quite kissing but close. They got in the water together and were kind of holding each other, but both of them were acting strangely. I don’t know quite what was going on. One way or another, I think there were two sexually confused people down there in the water.

Other than watching the lesbian bikini show I read my book, did some vocabulary on my handheld computer, and enjoyed the awesome weather. Finally, once the heat was too much I headed back to the train station, and took the train to Maiko park, and then lounged around some more on the grass in the shade and took in views of the Akashi bridge. After about an hour of that, I was finally ready to head home.

I got back, took a cold shower, and then set about doing a little bit of organizing. Luckily, Kuniko got home early, so we were able to have a simple healthy dinner of tofu, stir fried sprouts and mushrooms, and a couple of nikuman.

We got a new game for the Nintendo DS, Super Mario Brothers, and so Kuniko is playing away right now. She’s only got a couple hours to relax this weekend, so I’m staying out of her way and letting her chill out.

Tomorrow is Monday, and it’s back to a long schedule. I’ve got a lecture in Japanese to a chemistry class, and I’m not sure how that is going to work out. It should be very interesting whether it turns out to be a success or a train wreck.